The Cosmic Ocean. Paul K. Chappell
and sleeping, but is more like an illness that occurs when something has gone wrong, then we can proactively do something about the causes of violence. Just as preventable problems such as malnutrition and lack of clean water can cause physical illness, preventable problems such as poverty, desperation, injustice, dehumanization, ignorance, bullying, and trauma can cause violent behavior.
According to Gary Slutkin, a medical doctor and founder of the program Cure Violence, which works to stop gang violence: “Violence is like the great infectious diseases of all history. We used to look at people with plague, leprosy, TB, as bad and evil people … What perpetuates violence can be as invisible today as the microorganisms of the past were.”8
This book is part of The Road to Peace series, a seven-book series about waging peace, ending war, the art of living, and what it means to be human. As the fifth book in this series, The Cosmic Ocean provides new answers to big questions about violence, peace, trauma, joy, oppression, war, environmental destruction, spirituality, the human condition, and humanity’s future. Just as inaccurate beliefs support unjust policies, realistic answers enable progress.
Like the other books in this series, The Cosmic Ocean shows how the road to peace is also the road of peace. In other words, the road that leads to peace is made of our dedicated efforts to wage peace. Because The Cosmic Ocean revisits a few of the central ideas from the other books, this book series can be read in any order. Each book journeys deeper into the human condition by expanding those central ideas in new directions and also introducing a lot of new content.
The Road to Peace book series journeys through dark places such as trauma, war, and racism, like passing through a foreboding cave, shadowy forest, or winding tunnel. But we will emerge on the other side with larger hope, stronger empathy, greater understanding, and practical tools we can use to improve our lives and communities. The stories in this book show how the brightest light shines in the deepest darkness, and how the answers human beings are searching for can be found in the darkest places of the human mind where many are afraid to enter.
The Problem of Purpose
The military taught me a secret about the human condition that many people do not know. By learning this secret as a West Point cadet and active duty soldier, I clearly saw how Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and other great peacemakers became so influential as leaders and visionaries. They also knew this secret.
Psychologist Erich Fromm described this secret when he wrote about how Sigmund Freud had been incorrect; Freud mistakenly believed that biological urges such as our desire for food and sex cause most human problems. Even today, I hear some people claim that most conflicts, wars, and injustices around the world are caused by human cravings for food and sex. According to them, if everyone had easy access to food, sex, and other physical comforts, humanity would live in peace.
But Erich Fromm had a more realistic understanding than Freud of our human problems, because he knew what the military, Gandhi, and King also knew. Fromm realized that when we have easy access to food and sex, our problems as human beings do not end. Instead, when these biological urges are easy to feed, our human problems truly begin.
For example, conquerors such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon had easy access to food and sex. Their motivations ran deeper than this, however, because although they had access to more food and sex than one person could possibly consume in a twenty-four-hour day, this could not stop them from conquering. In Europe and other parts of the world, many kings and even queens also became obsessed with conquering, despite having easy access to food, sex, and other physical comforts.
The U.S. military, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Erich Fromm all taught me a secret about the human condition. The secret is that our greatest human problems do not result from biological cravings for food and sex, but our search for purpose and meaning. The craving for purpose and meaning, more than any physical craving, drives people to conquer, to become fanatics, to produce great art, to feel alienated and alone, to suffer from addiction, to descend into madness, and to commit suicide. Erich Fromm explained:
Even if man’s hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied “he” is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power, or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life. Indeed, “man does not live by bread alone.”9
The saying “man does not live by bread alone” is from the Bible, found in the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus says, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”10 Although this saying has been interpreted in different ways, its core message expresses a basic truth about the human condition that religious people and atheists can both agree upon. This truth is that food alone is not enough to satisfy a human being, because we have other needs. Some people call these religious needs. Others call these spiritual needs. And some call these psychological needs. But whatever we call them, these needs include humanity’s craving for purpose and meaning.
The McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs says “man does not live by bread alone” is a proverb that means that “in order to survive, people need more than physical things like food and shelter; people need mental or spiritual things like satisfaction and love.”11 The McGraw-Hill dictionary also illustrates the meaning of this proverb through a dialogue between two people:
Alan: I’m so miserable.
Jill: How can you be miserable? You’ve got a good place to live, plenty to eat, nice clothes …
Alan: But man does not live by bread alone.12
At West Point I learned that effective leaders provide people with purpose and meaning, because the human condition causes us to crave purpose and meaning like plants crave sunlight and water. If people are given a deep sense of purpose and meaning, they will work hard and even willingly die for a cause. Throughout history countless people have died for causes that give them purpose and meaning, such as their freedom, family, country, religion, and ideals such as democracy. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. died for peace and justice, while many soldiers and activists died struggling for the rights and freedom of others.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized this secret was common sense. Human beings, no matter what racial or religious background they come from, want a reason to get out of bed in the morning. They want their work to be rewarding. They want life experiences that give them emotional fulfillment. They want to feel that their existence matters. And they want to feel connected to something larger than themselves, whether it is their friends, family, country, planet, God, a mission, or an ideal. They want something worth living for, and even something worth dying for.
We can better understand humanity’s craving for purpose and meaning by exploring the story of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Sisyphus had been condemned to hell, which was called Tartarus in Greek mythology. The book Mythology, edited by C. Scott Littleton, describes Tartarus, where people who committed evil and many of the Titans who rebelled against Zeus were tortured for eternity:
The real terror that assailed the dying was the thought of being condemned to take the road to Tartarus, increasingly thought of as the destination of sinners. Tartarus was a pit so deep that it was said that an anvil dropped from Earth would take nine or ten days to reach the bottom. Much of it was in total darkness. Within its bounds, wrong-doers faced eternity under the worst torments. One was Ixion, who had killed his future father-in-law, then tried to carry off Zeus’s own wife; his fate was to be stretched forever on a wheel of fire … Sisyphus, who had seized his brother’s throne and betrayed Zeus’s secrets, had to keep pushing a huge boulder up a steep hill, only to see it roll down each time he neared the top …
Tartarus’s